the make-up tour dates (UK! EUROPE! OZ/NZ! FESTIVALS!) and a house party question.

at long last, the tour dates i cancelled are re-scheduled (plus there are some awesome EXTRA appearances all over the place)!!! hopefully everyone will be able to come to the make-up shows but i DEEPLY apologize in advance if anyone can't. if you need to turn your tickets, please go to the original point of purchase and you’ll be fully refunded.

i talk more about it ALL - the nature of the tour, who's coming (we've got a new DRUMMER), who's opening up for us, the re-birth of THE BRIGADE, and more, more, more - in a brand new blog HERE. it's overflowing with the nitty-gritty if you want it. i'm also doing a bunch of festival dates (glastonbury! newport folk! pridefest in milwaukee!), a show in northampton MA later this week (and then at bard with neil the next day), a free show at wesleyan university on april 13th, and many other one-offs. all of 'em are below, but read the blog if you want to get the WAY-low-down on the details. i didn't want to just cut and paste all that into this backer update.

IN KICKSTARTER-RELATED LAND…we're working slowly but surely on putting all of the kickstarter house parties together, but all you house-party people: i have a question for you.i'd love for you to hit me in the backer comments so that i can keep this specific to kickstarter.cool? cool.

ondi timoner is a filmmaker i met at SXSW...and while you might not know her name, you might know her as the chick who made "dig", the 2004 documentary film about the dandy warhols and the brian jonestown massacre. i saw it back in the day and was deeply impressed - i recognized a lot of myself and my band in that film.she also made an amazing documentary i'm watching right now called "we live in public", about the "darker effects" of social media. (it's incredible....and disturbing as fuck.)both of her films won the grand jury prize at the sundance film festival. she is a TOTAL bad-ass with a profound heart and she's smart, smart, smart.she and i hit it off like houses on fire in the australian outback…

i was talking to her about how i felt one of the TRUE revolutions this kickstarter campaign - an element which was pretty overlooked - was the house-party aspect: the fact that SO many people made facebook pages, bonded and banded together, and trusted each other with huge sums of money to make these parties go. and it's working. it's incredible when you think about it. and now i get to fly around the world and meet all of these people in south africa, israel, norway, and australia...all these people who trusted each other.

…and then, something wonderful and obvious (?) happened: she approached me about documenting as many of our house parties as possible, for a new series on atotaldisruption.com. if she can find the funding, of course (she'll probably try via kickstarter…poetic).

to her, the primary reason for doing this is in hopes that she can capture how i'm trying to leverage technology to connect directly with people - in this case, all of YOU. i do it for a lot of reasons, but the big'un's because i want to bring people together in places where we can feel safe to exchange ideas and emotion…and ondi wants to show how we built up from a mailing list to a message board to social networks and now to a goddamned GLOBAL community. a community where we've learned so much; mostly, how to trust and work together. it makes the world so much better as we're able to not only make it a little bit smaller, but also the way we hope and will it to be.

in short…she got it.
and i trust her. nobody has ever been so close to me & a piano with a camera (the video is HERE if you're curious):

so....while filming this shit seems, on the one hand, like a fabulously fabulous idea...i also see the downside. the house parties that are huge and drunk and ruckus-y probably wouldn't suffer at all (in fact ondi's energy might even make them more fun) but for the parties that are planned to be teeny-weeny and intimate, i can see the idea of a camera changing the vibe. i know at the VERY least, *i* am different when a camera is anywhere near me, and i'm honest about that...i go into a slightly different mode. so while i'd never let ondi bust in on any of the parties without getting express permission from the host: i just kind of wanted to throw the idea out there and get a sense of how you guys feel about it in general.ondi - and of course me - want you to feel comfortable and have fun…the documentation would be done in hopes to shine a light on this fucking revolution we are in together, but a part of that is and always has been about feeling good. and safe.

i was chatting to one of the seattle house party host-folks over the phone right after ondi fell into my life with these ideas....and i asked her how she felt - she had a "the more-the-merrier" attitude about it. so…all y'all…please give me input. agreed? exciting? invasive? good? bad? indifferent? hit me. maybe it's history. maybe it's annoying. it's hard for me to say.

ANYWAY…back to your regularly scheduled backer update. here are ALLLLL the upcoming dates.additional info, openers, ticketing info, and all that fun stuff can be found on my SHOWS page and in the BLOG. sorry that we do not have direct links for all of the shows, yet. we will update my tour page as soon as we do. whee!

Comments

Host of the Northern VA party here, I haven't heard from everyone that will be attending the party, but I have only received yeses, on being filmed, from those that have replied. Since it is a larger party, and Kyle and I were already hoping that he will be able to make it, for whatever date we end up getting, I was kind of already expecting it to be documented in some form, so I don't see a problem adding video to the mix. :-)

Philadelphia house party host here.
We're going to be a small group. In a medium size Philadelphia house. And I was hoping for an intimate feel. I'm not really comfortable having a film crew in what I was hoping would be a chance for 25 of us to connect with you for a few hours. Cameras do change things, and people could see the Amanda Palmer who is always on camera at one of the art openings or a smaller venue show or on you tube. I understand the idea of documenting these intimate connections, but I'm worried it would be at the price of the intimacy itself.

I think if she is interested in understanding about how the different house parties came about, the process and the instant community that kind of just formed on it's own, that could be a different story than documenting the actual event.

So far the general consensus from all of the attendees is they are fine with it, but if it's not too invasive as in no cameras in peoples faces without permission previously given, and probably not the entire evening so as not to take away from the intimacy of the evening. Like if you want to ask people questions and film it, we'll maybe ask everyone beforehand who might be interested in participating in that, and if no one does then just fly on the wall type filming

A few people filmed at the BBQ last time and it didn't seem to bother anyone so if it's not extremely obvious then it should be fine. I haven't heard back from all my attendees but the majority so far are in agreement

Hey Amanda, Perth house party here...
I've put the question out and the response appears to be yes, but just for a small portion of the evening. It seems like the other cities are of a similar opinion which is good. I'd like to know a little bit more about what your aim for the documentary would be but I'm sure you'll get to that. =)

Hiiiii! I'm the host of the just-north-of-Seattle House Party, and we definitely share this 'the more the merrier' sentiment! I think it would be great to have such a wonderful thing documented and seen through someone as brilliant as Ondis eye!!

For one thing, Ondi is a great filmmaker and probably the perfect person to do this sort of documentary. For a second thing, to get a sense of how the intimacy of reality can really work on many levels in a documentary form, go watch the Academy Award winner SHERMAN'S MARCH (1989, Ross McElwee). A doc in that style will open up the privacy/documentary debate, but, when done just so, expresses something beyond anything intentional reaching levels of magic.

I so regret not being able to figure out how to participate at a house party level. I look forward to seeing the results.

London house party attendee - I agree with what somebody else said below, it might be nice to have a mixture of the two. Maybe I have the idea of the house party wrong, but I figured there'd be a bit of time where you are Amanda Fucking Palmer, and a bit of time where you're just mandy chillin and talking to people. And getting Amanda Fucking Palmer on film doesn't pose much of an issue, but when it comes to just sitting down and chilling out in an intimate setting, it could be a little weird having a camera around. That said, it also depends how "close" the camera will be getting - like, if it's just in a corner doing all round filming of the whole experience then that is less of an issue than, say, constantly being sat next to YOU all night, so that any interaction with you automatically becomes a performance for the camera.

This is a state called New Mexico and this state has beautiful deserts and amazing mountains and the best sunsets in the world. It also has people who would love to see you here but everyone passes us by. They go from Colorado to Arizona and I guess they think there's nothing in between but blank space because they never stop. Please come here one day. You can sleep at our house, all of you, we don't care we just want to see you live. Yes I saw you on youtube and it was amazing but it would be great to see you and the boys play in Albuquerque. The place where Bugs Bunny always gets lost.

So, this has nothing to do with house parties or documentary film makers, but about the tour dates - I notice there's nothing scheduled for Canada. Anything planed for us folks north of the 49th P anytime soon. Some of us aren't allowed across the border and so won't get to see your magnificence unless you come to our home town - or at least home country.

Denver host here :) I'm up for pretty much anything, including this idea! I'm going to echo the idea that Justin had about maybe keeping it time-limited or just to one room for part of it, because I recognize that not everyone's comfortable in front of a camera all the time. I'd be excited to just be a part of the awesomeness - I love the video idea!

Also (insert shameless promotion here): we're still looking for people to join us at the Denver house party: Tweet me @berthablu27 for details :)

Portland host here! (the Friday night one). I'm totally okay with having her there to film. I'll check with the person who's house we're having it at and will let you know if she says no, but I think it should be okay. I really like the idea of documenting what's happening with the kickstarter. What we're doing is game changing and fascinating to watch evolve (and be a part of!)

As a Colorado house party planned attendee, I don't mind the idea of a camera present in theory, but I feel like we'd be missing out on the opportunity to really get to talk to _you_ - and for that matter, for you to get to talk to us, since I'm also in the "different mode in front of a camera" crowd - with a camera running. (Probably everyone is in that crowd to some degree, but I'm particularly aware of it in myself from experience.)

So...maybe after a couple of hours it could get turned off or move into a room for interviews or stay inside or stay outside or...something? so we could have the best of both worlds.